Warren Buffett said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” Having ethics in the organization and a strong culture that both costumers and employees believe in is the key to success. As Cinny Little mentions on her blog, “strong organizational culture is a powerful talent attractor.” When people believe in the culture of an organization, they want to become part of it and thus there is a huge pull of applicants for each job position. The company is then able to choose among the best employees in the workforce.

In organizations where there is customer service, such as airline companies or restaurants, the more the employee believes in the organizational culture, the more willing he is to help the costumer. Costumers gradually become loyal to the companies because they enjoy having good customer service and the organisation enjoys repeated sales. For example, as Ken Makovsky mentions in his blog, the success of Southwest Airlines mostly lies on its culture. As mentioned in the blog, Southwest inspires employees with the mission and the vision statement of the organization. Employees believe in what they do and that is reflected in their work, which in turn satisfies customers.

Ken Makovsky’s blog shows that Southwest Airlines values transparency among employees. This technique enables employees to feel included in the decision making process, which then makes them more willing to carry out the decisions made. The employees can follow the culture of the organization because they are selected mainly on the premise of whether they fit the culture or not. Sometimes it is better to select a “less skillful” employee that is perfectly in line with the organizational structure than one that is the “most competent” one. If the “most competent” one cannot eventually integrate himself into the organizational culture, chances are he will quit or not be motivated to work as efficiently, which is harmful for the organization.

The most important role of organizational culture is to make employees included. Simple things such as a company moto can significantly contribute to the employees’ sense of belonging to the organisation. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs highly emphasizes the importance of social needs in employee motivation and organizational structure highly contributes to that.

Gordon Lam in his blog post raised a very interesting issue. The media, history and textbooks have long focused on the importance of leaders. However, there is no leader without followers and thus followers are equally important. Our professor showed us a video in class. The video portrayed people who were sitting on the grass in the middle of a sunny day when a person decided to start dancing. For some time, he was dancing on his own, so it seemed like he was embarrassing himself. This all changed when a few followers joined him. Then within a few minutes his dance became a massive event full of people who seemed to enjoy themselves. At that point the people outside the dance were outsiders. This outlines the importance of followers, because without them, there is no group.

Gordon Lam points out that although “everyone aspires to be a leader,” “there must be followers.” Followers can be leader themselves and may have followers of their own, which is often the case in organization. Followers can also depend on one another, which another form of power. Gordon explain that followers do not have to agree with everything the leaders say. In contrast, if they absolutely disagree with the leader’s decision, they can threaten the leader, if not the entire organization or government, by stop working. An example is Apple. Although Steve Jobs was the leader of the organisation, if it wasn’t for the engineers and the rest of the employees with the know-how and the expertise, the iPhone would have never been built. Thus the threat of employees going on strike, gives them a lot of power over the decision making process.

The leader’s job is to make the followers willing to follow him. Effective leaders enable their employees to feel useful, included and unique. As Harper Zhou mentions in her blog, in Eastern cultures such as China and India “leaders often maintain a supreme power over the decision-making power.” While in western cultures where “individualism” and individual traits are valued more, leaders tend to me more “democratic”. The leader’s behavior is important because it determines willing followers are to follow and thus how functionalthe firm is.

Gurleen Gill in her blogpost posed the question of whether “teamwork can be the solution to all problems.” I do not know if teamwork can effect “everything” but it can have a significant impact on employee intrinsic motivation. Humans are social species so interacting and working in a group sounds more promising than working alone. However, working in team can pose risks as a dysfunctional team can lead to more employee dissatisfaction than a job without human interaction ever would.

The most important aspect of working in a team is the relationships built between the team members. Effective teams have open communication, clear purpose, clear rules and work assignments and shared leadership. In such teams, each team member can express his idea, which is heard and valued. Employees build strong relationships with their team members and feel included and useful to both the organisation and the team.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs explains that such interpersonal relationships and this sense of belonging satisfies people’s social needs and thus acts as an intrinsic motivator. As a result, employees that work in functional teams are more eager to go to work, more willing to stay for longer in the office and less willing to quit their job. This decreases the “labor turnover” and “absenteeism” as Gurleen also mentions.

However, a team can be dysfunctional or, to the extreme, team members can be abusive to each other. Ineffective teams might not share issues and concerns, or fail to carry out decisions. However, the most detrimental teams in employee motivation are those with hidden conflict and subgroups. In such dysfunctional teams, some members feel excluded and their opinions and ideas are not heard or are undermined.

Herzberg’s motivation theory explains that being undermined and not heard violate hygiene factors so employees are not only not motivated, but are totally dissatisfied with their work. Such employees might stay in the organisation only because of extrinsic factors, such as money. Employees who feel excluded from their teams are more willing to quit their job and are less eager to go to work in the morning or stay longer in the office. In this case, the employees are more miserable working in a team than they would be if they were working alone.